Adobe Photoshop CS2 Version 9
is part of Adobe's Creative Suite 2 and brings a new range of
interesting features for digital photographers. The objective of this
review is to highlight the new and changed features compared to
Photoshop CS. As usual, we will focus on those features which are useful
to digital photographers.

This
review of Photoshop CS2 is based on the final version for Windows with
Adobe Bridge 1.0.2 (the current version is 1.0.1, but 1.0.2 should be
available in the very near future).

Following
the Adobe Photoshop tradition, each new version is a smooth evolution
from earlier versions which makes it easy to switch versions and allows
you to benefit from your earlier learning curve. Apart from a few
exceptions, most of the commands and shortcuts are identical to earlier
versions.

I
see no reason why besides the current "classic" Photoshop view, there
is no optional "modern" view based on the progress made with Photoshop
Elements 3 which has a toolbox and expandable palettes which are
integrated into the window itself. As far as the palettes are concerned,
it matters less as we still have the palette well. But we are still
stuck with the floating toolbox which cannot be docked anywhere. Its odd
shape takes up valuable real estate and often gets accidentally hidden
behind other palettes. I hope this is the last version of Photoshop we
have to put up with this rather trivial inconvenience.

A
long awaited improvement is the display of a sample word next to the
font name in the font list of the Type tool so you have an idea what the
fonts looks like. Unfortunately the word "Sample" is not much to go by
as it exemplifies only 6 sample characters and no numbers.

Adobe Bridge

The
File Browser which was introduced in Photoshop 7 and improved in
Photoshop CS is now called "Adobe Bridge" because it can be accessed via
the other Creative Suite applications as well. Just like the File
Browser, Bridge's integration with Adobe Camera Raw 3.1 allows you to
preview, adjust, and process multiple raw files at once. Moreover, the
processing can be done in the background while performing other tasks in
Photoshop. Bridge can also run independently from Photoshop as a
standalone application. New features include scaleable thumbnails, many
types of image review modes, and improved rating and labeling features.
We will now have a closer look at the performance.

Performance
tests were done with on a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 machine, with 3GB RAM, 30"
Mac LCD driven by a Nvidia Quadro FX3400 graphics card, four 200GB
serial ATA disks (one for with the OS and CS2, one dedicated scratch
disk, two for data), with Windows XP SP1, and no other applications
running or installed. Test results with other hardware configurations
will of course be different. So you should mainly be looking at the
relative numbers.

Starting
up Photoshop CS2 and then Adobe Bridge 1.0.2 for the first time after a
reboot took about 16 seconds. Subsequently, it took about 8 seconds.
Very similar to Photoshop CS and the File Browser. However, you can
launch Bridge faster as a standalone application without opening
Photoshop. The first startup after reboot is at 6 seconds, slower than
the 2 seconds ACDSee needs. For subsequent launches, the difference is
only about one second.